​The 'right technology' and the role it plays in addressing the efficiency challenge faced by the NHS.

The NHS is faced with the challenge of making significant efficiency savings in the next few years. At Fortrus we believe that investment in the right technology will play a key role in addressing that challenge, it should be at the forefront of everyone’s minds and able to demonstrate the benefits of efficiency.

Too many organisations forget this one simple fact; that software is there to enhance the capabilities of its users.

Virtually every system that we are called in to supersede is built by development professionals who build from the top down. They allow the data to dominate the user experience, resulting in a system that’s technically acceptable, but practically useless. This costs organisations money and hours of frustration for staff that should be spent getting the job done.

The health sector has fallen into the trap of development first, user experience second. Often, user interface design is viewed as a mere exercise in aesthetics; making the application look slightly better. This is an assumption that ignores the needs of the users, and for IT departments in healthcare that are often under resourced and operationally focused, it can easily result in outright failure.

A key instance of this is the increasing move towards the digitisation of patient records. Hospitals are investing in project management, scanning strategies and the development of underlying databases, yet leaving the question of how we present this digitised data to clinicians as a secondary thought.

Yet what is the use of digitised data if it is not presented through an interface that first and foremost meets the demands of the users? Would a clinician rather do their pre-surgical checks on a mobile device in the operating theatre, or on a large desktop PC in their office?

Will nurses need to sift around for patient records on various sub-systems, or should they be presented with seamless access to all the information through a single unified viewer on their iPad? These are questions IT departments in the health sector need to ask themselves, particularly when efficiency savings need to be made. At Fortrus we focus on delivering the trust’s business case and the challenges that can bring, but we also focus on delivering innovation to the user experience through direct engagement with clinicians.

An example Fortrus customer is already realising £2.6m of savings per year through the implementation of our solution, enabling clinicians to make better informed decisions through the use of our unique application, Unity.

For further information, please contact:

Leigh Baillie

Chief Marketing Officer

Fortrus Ltd

leigh.baillie@fortrus.com

+44 7894 517828